Book of Sin (Vol 1-2).. Seriously?!?

[Infrequent gamer]

I am really starting to lose patience with this game. I must make *4590* Ancient Spells to get through both books. That takes... forever. And not an idle forever, either. I have to keep switching between the party for the Altar (to get Ink), and the party for the DK (to get Runes from Silver Dragon drops), so I can't even set it and go do other stuff to come back in ten hours. I have to keep screwing around every 10-15 minutes swapping parties. This idle game seems insufficiently idle.

Worst of all... I have no idea if there's any good reason for me to do this. And will I have to do it again, or was once enough? (I am at the tail end of an ED3, and I was just curious about what the Holy City looked like as I'd never been there. Now I know that one of the lives the Curious Cat lost was due to old age. :-( )

If this is how things are going to be from now on, I have really invested my time in the wrong game. :-( So... is it? Is it going to be like this from here on out?

[Ruby150]

I assume you haven't gotten the rare enemy from that area that gives passive ink regen while in the party? That would certainly speed things up. Another thing I would suggest is trying to improve your loop action effect so you gain more per completion so it becomes a more 1:1 ratio, or eventually, a 1:2 ratio

[Kite Sumane]

The main reason you go for the Books of Sin is to get the capacity for some of the Area Statues as well as the Dark Ritual bonus each completion gets you. Pretty much you complete all this if you intend to do some grinding for your current run or just want the juicy lore.

As for solving the Ink and Runes problem, the answer is Magic Formation and AOE effect. Just que up the Holy City Boss and Dungeon 2, make sure all your party members have AOE effect from Spells and/or Equipment, then toggle automated Magic Formation. As long as your party is strong enough, you can make as many Ancient Spells as you need while minding your own business. Part of solving the game is figuring out how to automate everything.

As for how the game progresses from here, things really speed up once you invest enough into Envy. For context, I can go from Reincarnation to accessing Zone 13 (Gourmet City) and complete all content along the way in a couple hours.

[Ruby150]

... What's your loop action effect looking like, Kite? I'm close to 5 at the moment

[Kite Sumane]

Well I am in the middle of some Sin runs right now so that means I am constantly Reincarnating. With no investment in Greed it is only a mere 32x. This is what 8000 hours sounds like.

[Ruby150]

... I assume most of that is from Quests?

[Infrequent gamer]

Hm. Thanks for your answer. I suspect the pithier version is "you get what you asked for if you grind things at the edge of your ability to complete".

I am still somewhat dubious about some of the fundamental design decisions for this game. But I will keep going for at least a little longer. I think my run is coming to an end shortly anyway. I'm stuck in both Evil and Holy cities, at 22.8k destiny, and while I may drop a couple of sins to get to 23k to see the poison swamp, I suspect this is pretty much it until I accumulate a bunch more blessing/destiny from completions.

[Kite Sumane]

I only have 2.559x from Quests. Most of it comes from Envy with a 7.038x multiplier. That is what 5 minutes of 1 Habit on Envy Level 8.04k can do.

Getting those Ending Clear bonuses helps dramatically with faster progression. Couple that with your newfound ability to have Faster Elemental Magic Capacity from Greed and the first three Endings should be something of a cakewalk now.

[Infrequent gamer]

Originally posted by Ruby150:

I assume you haven't gotten the rare enemy from that area that gives passive ink regen while in the party? That would certainly speed things up. Another thing I would suggest is trying to improve your loop action effect so you gain more per completion so it becomes a more 1:1 ratio, or eventually, a 1:2 ratio

No Ink ally yet, just the Title (ineffective at 0.01/sec). By the end of the grind, spells were down to 5.5/loop and 2.528 Ink/Altar. But it was a LOT slower at the start.

Originally posted by Kite Sumane:

As for solving the Ink and Runes problem, the answer is Magic Formation and AOE effect. Just que up the Holy City Boss and Dungeon 2, make sure all your party members have AOE effect from Spells and/or Equipment, then toggle automated Magic Formation. As long as your party is strong enough, you can make as many Ancient Spells as you need while minding your own business. Part of solving the game is figuring out how to automate everything.

I don't think that's a reasonable answer for most people. Getting to the point where formations are up enough of the time to make this reasonable is not in the cards any time soon. Not for months, at least.

As for how the game progresses from here, things really speed up once you invest enough into Envy. For context, I can go from Reincarnation to accessing Zone 13 (Gourmet City) and complete all content along the way in a couple hours.

But how long does it take to get there? I will have to do a bunch of shorter runs now to see how fast I can get Sin production up.

[Kite Sumane]

Ok, just looked up the calculations. The first 100 Routine Levels in Envy will triple your Combat Stats, double your Habit Efficiency, Exp Drop Amount, Will Gain Amount, Crystal Converter Bonus, Research Drop Amount, Seed Drop Amount, and Summon Familiar Speed, and it will give you a 50% increase to Instant Action Effect, Loop Action Effect, and Satiety. The rest of the stats have bonuses all over the place.

According to the wiki, Envy is available after beating the Arbitrator.

[Infrequent gamer]

Originally posted by Kite Sumane:

Ok, just looked up the calculations. The first 100 Routine Levels in Envy will triple your Combat Stats, double your Habit Efficiency, Exp Drop Amount, Will Gain Amount, Crystal Converter Bonus, Research Drop Amount, Seed Drop Amount, and Summon Familiar Speed, and it will give you a 50% increase to Instant Action Effect, Loop Action Effect, and Satiety. The rest of the stats have bonuses all over the place.

100 levels in each Envy habit is unimaginably far away. I currently have 140 total across all of them, while getting to 100 is a single one would take 10+99*(1.0+10.8)/2 = 594.1 Complaints just for that ONE HABIT.

Anyway, looks like my current run is over. Evil City is (as advertised, I suppose) Evil - gated behind Destiny, Malice, and Virtue, none of which are sufficiently accessible to me. I managed to clear the Poison Swamp but I can't access the third dungeon, so that's that.

Maybe Sin will come much faster on short runs now. Guess I'll see.

[Kite Sumane]

100 Routine Levels not Envy Levels. Envy Levels are bought with Complaints. Routine Levels are gained through Habit but are sped up by Envy Levels. I can't recall how easy it was to gain Routine Levels early on, but it probably isn't too bad.

And don't feel too bummed out by Evil City. From what I can gather by looking at the Bestiary, Evil City was the original endgame Zone (after the Evil City monsters are the Guardians. Zone 11 monsters come after them which suggests that they were added later). If you can beat Evil City, then you have a good chance of beating Ending 5 (the original Final Ending).

[Infrequent gamer]

Originally posted by Kite Sumane:

100 Routine Levels not Envy Levels.

Ok now I'm really confused. What you actually said was:

The first 100 Routine Levels in Envy will ...

[Ruby150]

Routine resets every reincarnation, Envy doesn't. Envy levels are gained through Complaints, which are Sin overflow when you're at your cap. The higher your Envy level, the faster your Routine will progress in a reincarnation, so you want to invest Complaints into the Envy levels to make it boost your gains faster

[Infrequent gamer]

Oh right. I knew that but the vocabulary is rather confusing.

So, yeah, it's usually easy to get a few more Routine levels than your Envy levels. Anything beyond that is going to be a nonstarter unless you're doing a long run with many hours between DRs, because of the exponential growth of the time to complete.

None of this invalidates my earlier point, which is that it will take around 12.5k Complaints to get to level 100 in each of the 21 Envy routines. Perhaps 12k or a hair less for long runs when you can afford to leave lots of habit in Envy for a while to pump the routine levels a few past the envy levels.

[Deathman.Kenshi]

You can automate booth books and spells with 6 slots, title for beating boss and rare enemy
I am in that same location, Farming sins at my 11th reincarnation , 10 in each envy was enough for me to one shot creator and memory eater
edit> Just one shoted Dominator still in same reincarnation, I guess I should unlocked him sooner ;3

https://imgur.com/a/TXeVgmb